Genesis 3:14–24

0:00 what on earth is wrong with y'all let me rephrase the question a little bit what on earth is wrong with us not just us sitting in this room but us as a human race what is wrong with us why through all the years and centuries and millennia of history do we human beings keep getting it wrong we've spent thousands of years trying to build civilizations and trying to build societies and trying to have the good life and trying to move human civilization toward utopia and time after time after time after time we make a little bit of progress and then we fail why is that the great awakening preacher jonathan edwards wrote a book back in the 1700s about the doctrine of original sin.

0:59 And one of the arguments that he made in that book was that if there's anything that should convince you of the truth of the Bible, it is the universal failure of every single human being, save one. What he meant was that if we're honest with ourselves, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that for every single one of us and every single one of those people out there, there is always something that is a failure. There is always something that is a sin that's a skeleton in the closet.

1:32 We all know that. We know that about ourselves. You know that about the person that's sitting right next to you. You know that if that person's life were laid bare in front of you, that if your life were laid bare in front of them, every single one of us would find ourselves exposed by the guilt of our sin. We know that about each other. We rely on that for consolation, don't we? We look at our sin and it grosses us out and then we think, but everybody has something. It's basically become the driving factor in American politics for the last couple of decades.

2:10 You notice that? Over the last couple of decades, American politics is not so much anymore about clashing policies. It's one gigantic game of find the skeletons. And if you can dig up enough junk on a candidate, you can basically disqualify them from office with their junk. And what makes it such a smash-mouth game, what makes that so compelling, is that everybody knows that every candidate has skeletons. But why?

2:45 And why is failure, why is moral disaster, why are skeletons in the closet such a universal truth of humanity? And is there any way for that to be fixed? That's what I want to talk to you about today as we continue our study through the book of Genesis. Let me invite you to take a Bible and turn to Genesis chapter 3. That's where we're going to be. These Red Pew Bibles are available to you either under your seats, I think, if you're on the sides or balcony or in the pew rack in front of you.

3:16 And if you just open it up right to the very beginning, like page 2, You'll see chapter 3 there of Genesis. And then on the other side of the page, you'll see our passage for today, verses 14 through 24. This fall, we're looking at the first 11 chapters of the book. We're actually not going to make our way through the whole book this fall. We'll be returning to Genesis over the course of several falls, I think, in order to make our way slowly through the book. But this fall, it's the first 11 chapters that tell all kinds of famous stories about the very origins of humanity.

3:47 So you've got the stories of Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel, and Noah and the flood, and the Tower of Babel. And the whole thing, right up until the end of chapter 11, goes right up until the call of Abraham to be the father of the nation of Israel, which then sets off the whole story of the Bible that culminates in the coming of Jesus Christ. These first 11 chapters are incredibly important because they lay down what wind up being some really fundamental truths that shape not only the story of the Bible, though that's true, these themes from chapters 1 through 11, and particularly chapter 3 that we're looking at the last two weeks or so, these shape not only the story of the Bible, but they shape our whole experience as human beings.

4:27 Because what these chapters teach about the nature of God, the nature of the world, the nature of you as a human being, those truths are just inescapable. And friend, that's true whether you consider yourself a Christian or not. These are fundamental basic truths that we're talking about that no matter how far you try to run from Christianity, No matter how much you try to ignore the Bible, you're not going to be able to get away from. So we do well to give these chapters our attention and see what we can learn from them. For the last few weeks, we've been looking at God's creation of the world in chapter 1.

4:59 Then the same story focused in more detail in chapter 2 on the creation of human beings. Then last week, we looked at the first half of chapter 3, the sort of narrative portion, which tells how human beings rebelled against God, joined the serpent, who is revealed in the New Testament to be Satan. And they join his program of declaring war against God. And the whole thing ended with God finding the human beings in the garden, hiding because of their shame, and he confronts them for their rebellion against him. Well, today we're going to be looking at the second half of that same chapter, chapter 3.

5:33 We're going to start in verse 14, make our way all the way down through the rest of the chapter, where we're going to see God handing down curses against the serpent, the woman, and the man. He basically, in these curses, declares what life is going to be like for them now in this new fallen world. But I think what winds up being interesting, what winds up being even shocking, if you haven't read this story or heard this story a thousand times, is that even in the midst of the cataclysm of man's sin, even in the midst of them declaring war on him and independence from him, God continues to show these little fallen human beings grace.

6:10 In fact, he makes a promise to them in these verses that will set the course of the rest of history. So let's see what happens. Look with me at Genesis chapter 3, starting in verse 14. In pain you shall bring forth children.

6:44 Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you. To Adam he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife. And have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you. You shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground because of you. In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you. And you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread. Till you return to the ground. For out of it you were taken. For you are dust, and to dust you shall return. The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.

7:18 And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. Then the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever. Therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. I think the main thing you notice as you start to read these verses is that this is not good.

7:57 Good things are not happening here. The serpent and then the woman and then the man are all told awful things about how their lives are going to play out now. And then at the end, Adam and Eve are basically driven out of this idyllic Garden of Eden to face this cold, hard, hostile, fallen world all alone. It's a horrible scene of death and curse and exile and dirt. But I think if you start to read it a little more closely, you start to notice some other things that are happening here.

8:28 I mean, you just notice some of the things that are kind of surprising. It's all dark, right? And yet there are these little flashes of light that happen throughout the story. I mean, for one thing, just notice that despite their rebellion against God, despite their declaring war against him, Adam and Eve don't actually die. God holds them in life. In fact, Adam, in that one verse, seems to realize that the human race is going to carry on. It's not going to be annihilated because he names the woman Eve because she's going to be the mother of all the living. And then there's that other verse, 21, that says that in spite of the fact that they've made themselves his enemies by their declaration of war on him, God does something kind for Adam and Eve.

9:06 He makes them clothes that are going to hold up much better than the fig leaves they sowed for themselves. So even though what we're expecting, what we're seeing at first, is nothing but death and destruction and curse, and what we're expecting is this thundering curse to fall and kill them, the whole thing looks like the history of the human race is going to carry on. Even here in the cataclysm, the whole story is reaching toward the future. And the point of the whole thing is the main idea. Even in the midst of sin's cataclysm, even in the midst of all the dark cataclysm of sin, God shows grace that gives hope for a future.

9:48 Even in the midst of the darkness, even in the midst of the cataclysm, God shows grace that gives hope for the future. We're not going to actually do this in kind of the normal fashion of most of the sermons that I preach. Normally what I like to do is take the text, divide it up into pieces, and then sort of put one sermon point for each section of the text. You've probably noticed that over the years. We're not going to do that this morning because it just doesn't quite work. And the reason it doesn't quite work is because the grace of God is sort of woven throughout the whole thing in various places.

10:19 So it would be very hard to divide it up in quite that way. Instead, what we're going to do is look at this whole story, this whole text, more thematically. And we're going to try to do two things. first thing we're going to try to do is come to grips, at least to some degree, with just how cataclysmic human sin really was. And then, once we've kind of got that, once the darkness has settled in on us, we're going to try to feel some of the relief that Adam and Eve must have felt when God sort of pointed to the future and said, you're not going to die right now. And in fact, he offers them his hand in certain ways instead of his sword. So there are two points to the sermon looking at two main themes that we see throughout this passage. Here they are. One, the cataclysmic results of man's sin. The cataclysmic results of man's sin. And then number two, the unexpected thrill of God's grace. The unexpected thrill of God's grace. I'll say one more time, the cataclysmic results of man's sin, and then the unexpected thrill of God's grace. So let's start looking at it. Point number one, the cataclysmic results of man's sin. So when we left off last week, what we

11:24 saw was God finding Adam and Eve in the garden where they were hiding and confronting them. He asked them a series of questions that just systematically expose the awfulness of what they've just done. And what they've just done is fail to carry out the job that God intended them to do. They were supposed to work the garden and guard it from evil. And instead of doing that, what they did was invite the evil in and then join it. They joined the serpent's program. And believe the certain serpents lie that if they would just eat the fruit that God had commanded them not to eat, they could become like God.

12:03 Well, the serpent turned out to be somewhat right, if you remember. He turned out to be right. They did become like God by gaining this knowledge that was only supposed to be God's. But it turned out that that knowledge was nothing but knowledge of evil, knowledge of shame, knowledge of guilt, knowledge of what it's like to be separated from God. You can see there, if you look down at the section for today, that most of it is poetic, right? It's set off like poetry, which means that it has features within it that don't necessarily show up in English, like rhyme and rhythm that make it different from kind of just normal paragraphic prose, right?

12:42 The whole thing, if you look at it, breaks down really easily into parts. So from 14 to 19, you've got these poetic curses themselves. God works his way up from the ground, handing down sentencing. So he starts with the snake, then he goes to the woman, then he goes to the man, right? That's the order. You remember those upward falling dominoes that Satan tried to make happen and in fact did make happen? Well, God curses them in that order, upward falling dominoes. Then from 20 to 24, you've just got another narrative section that show the first results of the sentencing, so what actually happens to Adam and Eve as a result of their sin.

13:18 All right, now before we look at these curses in any detail, and we're going to look at We're going to get down into the wording and talk about what they mean. But before we do that, it's important to get straight, like right now in our heads, what these things actually are. Because believe it or not, people do, in fact, get confused about this. So in terms of the nature of what these things are, here's the most important thing to keep in mind. These curses are not commands. They are general statements of what life will be like now, unfortunately, in this newly sinful fallen world.

13:56 They're not commands. So, for example, if a woman manages to avoid pain in childbearing, somehow, or if a man manages to get a job that does not require sweat, they're not violating some command that they're supposed to obey. So, ladies, it is not sinful for you to use epidurals in childbirth. Men, it is, I'm not kidding. And men, it is not sinful for you to wear deodorant and antiperspirant at work.

14:30 I mean, by the same token, neither is it sinful if you never have children in all of your life. Or, guys, if you never have a job as a farmer. That's not the point. They're not commands. These curses describe what life will be like for humans in general. They're what you might call, it's a big word, but a simple concept. They're paradigmatic. They describe a paradigm, a pattern that will be largely true, but not true for every single individual. Now, you've got to understand that, and you've got to keep it in mind, or you'll misunderstand entirely what's going on.

15:03 And you'll never have an epidural, and you never will wear antiperspirant, because you'll think you're violating God's command. That's not what's happening, but let's look at them. So in verses 14 and 15, God hands down sentence first against the serpent, Satan. That's where he starts, the one who is sort of the most guilty. And you can see there in verse 14, he leaves no doubt about why this is happening. It's because you have done this, because you have deceived the man and the woman, because you have lied to them about my nature and my purposes for them, because you have enticed them to rebel against me.

15:35 You will be cursed above all other beasts of the field, above all the other creation. You're cursed more than them. And you look at Romans 8. See that Paul makes it clear that the whole creation, not just snakes, but the whole creation is subjected to the curse of the fall. But it falls hardest on this creature here. The serpent, Leviathan, Satan, is cursed more than any other created thing. The actual curse that he hands down on him has two parts to it. First of all, in 14, he says that the serpent will crawl on its belly and eat dust.

16:07 And then in 15, it says that the serpent will ultimately be defeated and crushed by what's called the offspring of the woman there. We're going to talk a lot more later about verse 15. Because it turns out, as you read the rest of the Bible, that verse 15 is one of the most important verses in the entire scripture. It's one of the most important little sentences in the whole history of humanity. But essentially, you can look at it there. It describes this ever-burning conflict between the serpent and the woman, between her offspring and his offspring, whatever all that means. And it's a struggle that ultimately ends, whatever that struggle is, it ends with the serpent's head being smashed into the ground.

16:43 So way more on that later. But first, a question here. What is going on with verse 14 and this curse of crawling on the belly? So who, here's the question, who or what is God talking to there? Is he talking to Satan, the sort of individual tempter? Or is he talking to, like, all snakes, all slithering things, all things with scales? Who is he talking to, Satan or snakes?

17:14 Well, here's the answer. He's talking there to both. He's talking to both the individual Satan and crawling, creeping, slithering things. That's what he's talking about. Now, how can that be, right? Well, it's really not that hard when you think of the Bible as what it is, which is literature, right? And in Hebrew literature, and really in all literature, you often have a situation where one individual is standing for or representing a whole bunch of other things or people, right?

17:47 And that's exactly what's going on here. The symbolism between Satan and snakes and slithering things can slide back and forth, just like any representative sort of relationship, so that what happens to the one also happens to the other. And sometimes it can be sort of a spiritual thing that happens in the one that has been a physical symbolic manifestation in the other. And that's what's going on here. God is talking to Satan as serpent. Satan as snake.

18:19 Which is entirely appropriate. It is entirely appropriate for God to treat Satan as sort of the representative of all slithering, scaling things. Because in the Bible, those slithering, scaly things are often represented by Satan. And Satan represents them, and they represent Satan. So that's why Satan is referred to as a dragon. He's referred to as a snake, a serpent, a leviathan, a sea creature, right? He's slippery, he's scaly by nature, ontologically.

18:51 And so he, in his ontological nature, represents all these scaly things. So there are two levels, two things that are going on here. On the most important level, God is talking to the individual Satan. He's talking to the person in the Bible, the sort of fallen angel in the Bible that's known as Leviathan, as the dragon, as the serpent. He's talking to him. And what he's telling Satan is that your curse is that you are going to endure humiliation and defeat.

19:24 You can look up those words in the Bible, having your face ground into the dirt and eating dirt is a not super common, but common enough symbol of defeat. And so what God is telling Satan is you are going to be defeated by this offspring of the woman, whoever that is. At the same time, though, Satan is representing all of these things that he's always represented as a slippery, scaly, slimy thing. And God is saying that Satan's defeat and humiliation is now going to be symbolized by the physical appearance of all of these snakes.

19:57 You see what he's saying? He's saying, Satan, you're going to die. You're going to be destroyed. You're going to have your face ground into the ground all the days of your life until your head is crushed. And all these creatures that are like you, all these slippery, slimy things that you represent are going to be forever a reminder of that coming fate of yours. That's what's going on. So he's speaking to Satan as serpent and saying, you're going to be defeated.

20:28 Well, in 16, God turns to the woman and hands down this sentence against her. Look at what he says to her in verse 16. To the woman, he said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing. In pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. I mean, if you look at it, you can see that the woman's punishment here falls on what were supposed to be her unique characteristics. What was unique about her in the human race, and that is her ability to bear children and then her relationship to her husband.

21:01 And essentially, the curse that comes down on her is that those jobs, childbearing, childrearing, and her relationship with her husband are now going to be hard, difficult, heartbreaking, instead of what they were supposed to be, which is an unmitigated, unmixed joy. Now look at 16 there carefully. That word childbearing there, it's not just a word that refers to the moment of childbirth. It's actually a word that symbolically refers to the whole of having and raising children.

21:33 And bring forth children there in the next line has the same wide sense. And the point is that, look, this whole process of having children, of raising children from beginning to end is now going to be a hard-fought struggle. It is not going to be easy. It's not just going to be Eve and her little ones frolicking around in the Garden of Eden. It's going to be hard. Now, friends, that's worth keeping in mind, especially on the heels of the parenting conference that many of you were at this weekend right here. Your general expectation for your relationship with your kids ought to be that it is going to be difficult, not easy.

22:10 There are inevitably going to be frustrations and heartbreaks and things your kids do that drive you absolutely insane. That is part of the deal now. And you know what will happen if you understand that from day one? If you go into the bearing and raising of children, understanding that it's just going to be hard what will happen is that you will be better equipped to handle those frustrations they will not jump out at you like a snake and startle you you'll be expecting it when your kids do the things that kids do when they destroy your computer or your phone or they throw a dog toy against the wall and break all kinds of pictures on the wall you will take a deep breath and you will not say why is this happening to me You may yell at the kid, but you won't say that.

22:59 You will say, this is normal now. It's not good, but it's very, very normal. That's one lesson we can take from this. Let's look at what God says to the man. And then I want to come back and talk about that second part having to do with woman's relationship to her husband. God's curse of the man runs from 17 to 19, and it too starts with this unambiguous statement of why this is happening. You look at verse 17 there. Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it.

23:32 In other words, because you substituted your wife's word for mine, all of this stuff is happening. When you read it, you can also see that the man's curse falls on, in kind of the same way, what was supposed to be unique to him in the human race, his ability and calling to work. To bring order to the earth, to bring it into submission to him and ultimately to God. And just like with the woman, the curse is that now that work is going to be hard and painful. Which I can now apply to all of you who go to offices. You should expect work to be hard and painful and frustrating.

24:06 Don't let it surprise you when things go wrong at work. It's to be expected in this fallen world. So the bottom line is, look, instead of enjoying the amazing bounty of the garden, Now, man is going to toil, and he's going to work, and he's going to sweat, and he's going to hurt just in the pursuit of scraping some food out of this now hostile earth, and he's going to do it every single day, day in and day out, until he returns to the dust from which he was made. Now, it's pretty bleak, isn't it? The sobering thought that one day, every single one of us, unless the Lord Jesus comes back, we are all going to return to the dirt from which we were made.

24:46 I mean, look down at your hand and just touch it. That thing's going to be dirt one day. It's going to crumble into dust. No matter who you are. I don't care how rich you are. I don't care how powerful you are. I don't care what offices you've held. You're going to be dirt. Reminds me of William Shakespeare having his character Hamlet marveling at one point in that play. That Alexander the Great, of all people, Alexander the Great. might have been turned into a cork to plug a beer barrel.

25:21 Or that Caesar, for all his majesty, might in the end have been smeared on a hole in the wall to stop a winter draft. It doesn't matter who you are, you're going to be dirt. Friends, we are nothing. We're a vapor. Unless we're united to him who lives forever. Then it all takes on some new meaning. You're not a cork in a barrel. You're not a little bit of mud scraped on a wall. You're a worshiper of Jesus Christ for all eternity.

25:55 That only happens if you're united to him. Take a step back. I mean, we've looked at all three of these curses. Now take a step back and let's see some of the dominating features of these curses. You kind of see a pattern that runs through them. I mean, for one thing, each one of them is a story of just unending struggle, first of all, that ends in defeat. You see that in the pattern? It's unending struggle that ends in defeat. So for the serpent, it's struggle with the woman and her seed, and the end is his head getting crushed.

26:28 For the woman, it's struggle with her husband for supremacy, and yet he ultimately defeats her and rules over her at the end of her curse. For the man, it's struggle with the ground itself. It's a war that ends, how? With him crumbling into the dirt that he fought for food every day of his life. Friends, that's the reality that we as humans brought on ourselves when we rebelled against God. Instead of being what God intended it to be, a life of fellowship with him, easy relationship to one another and to the world around us, life has become, because of our sin, a grind and a struggle.

27:03 It's a struggle to stay alive. It's a grind against the world, against other people, and ultimately against God. I think it's worth thinking about this in a little more detail. So look back. We're just going to keep looking at these curses for a little bit. Look back at the second half of 14. Because that part of 14 and then the first few lines of 15 define this relational grind more particularly. In other words, what you see here as woman is cursed and then man is cursed, what you see is God telling the woman and man what are going to be the paradigmatic sins of each of them.

27:44 So there's that word paradigmatic again, right? It's laying out a paradigm, a pattern. It's a pattern we ought to fight against, especially as Christians. And yet it will be the pattern of relationship between man and woman. And you can see very particularly what he says about each of them. So look at the second half of 14. What does it mean there that the woman's desire will be for her husband? Now, your ESV Bible may have translated that as contrary to, and that's probably accurate. But the phrase is actually just, your desire will be for your husband.

28:15 And so some people have said that this is a sexual desire. Other people have said, well, it's a good sort of submission to her husband. But if those things were true, then this would be describing something good. And that's not very likely, I think, since we're in the middle of a bunch of curses. I mean, also, just look across the page at chapter 4, verse 7. This is where God is talking to Cain. And he says this to him in 4, 7. If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door.

28:48 And then he says this little sentence right here. Sin's desire is for you or contrary to you, but you must rule over it. It's the same exact word. Same exact word as back in 3.14. In this new fallen world, the woman's tendency, her paradigmatic sin, is going to be to try to dominate her husband. Just like sin wants to dominate Cain. You might say that her pattern of sin is this.

29:19 In other words, the serpent's poison has so infected her that her impulse, her very paradigmatic impulse, just as she did at the foot of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, is going to be to try unendingly to claw at God's structures of authority, to try to tear them down, to try to take leadership for herself in the places where God has specifically said that men are to lead. And what God is saying here is that the pattern of sin for women is going to be to try to tear those good structures of authority down. Well, where is that specifically?

29:51 Where specifically is it that God has said that men are to lead and the paradigmatic sin of women is going to be to try to tear that down. Well, you read the New Testament and it's particularly in the home and in the church. God has mandated in no uncertain terms that leadership in the home and leadership in the church is to be held by men, by husbands and by elders. And here's the thing, ladies, insofar as you find that somewhere down in your heart bothering you and certainly insofar as you work against that in real ways and resist it you need to understand that you are doing the work of the serpent you're clawing at the good structures of authority that God has put in place just like the serpent enticed Eve to do in the garden because this is an important point so let me put a fine point on it let me ask you a question that has a fine point to it, does it bother you when you hear somebody like me, some preacher

30:55 or some officiant at a wedding or something like that, does it bother you when you hear someone say that wives are to submit to their husbands? Somewhere deep down, here's another question, does it bother you when you realize that our church right here at 3rd Avenue reserves the office and function of elders to men? Friend, if you feel the little tickle of bother, or for some of you it may be a rage of insult. But insofar as you feel that, it's worth considering, friend, where that discomfort is coming from.

31:32 Because it very well might be that it's coming from right here in Genesis chapter 3, verse 14. Your desire shall be to dominate. Beware of that. It's not just women, though, that are said to be affected by this. God actually describes two paradigmatic sins that will affect men post-fall. Two, he gets the double treatment. So the first of them is actually in the last phrase of 14. The woman will seek to dominate her husband, but if you look at it, the result of that, the conflict that's created and the defeat that comes in the end, is that the husband will rule over her.

32:07 Now that's not a good kind of ruling. If you look at 4-7, again, you'll see the same word there. Adam is going to end up doing to Eve, men will end up doing to women what Cain is supposed to do to sin. Dominate it, crush it, rule it. Same word. Again, it's a hard, cold domination. So that's one way God says that fallen men are now sinfully going to respond to women's desire to dominate them. They'll crush, they'll rule with an iron fist. Domination, that's one of man's paradigmatic sins.

32:41 The second way, second paradigmatic sin of men is in the first phrase of 15. You see it there? Because you listened to your wife and replaced my word with hers. Because you listened to your wife. Do you see what it's saying? If the man doesn't respond with domination, what he's going to respond with is abdication. He'll just give in to her. He'll just let her have her way, no matter how sinful that way is. I mean, this is just as important for you as it is for the women in our congregation.

33:14 Do you see either of these sins in yourself? Either a desire to dominate or a desire to just give up and go passive and abdicate. And here's the thing. You don't have to be married either, guys, for these things to mark your life. Though it's usually magnified when you are married. That's the context in which this is, after all. But you don't have to be married. Because, look, if you have a tendency in life and marriage either to crush others or to just give in to them, you, friend, are doing the work of the serpent.

33:47 you're clawing at or at least allowing to fall down the good structures of authority that God has put in place. Beware of that. All right, let's step back for a second and look at all of this. It's just an awful picture that's painted here. Because they've rebelled against God, because they've cut themselves off from all his goodness and peace, human life is gonna be a miserable struggle now for them. All these curses have thundered down and that's the result of it. It's gonna be miserable. They're going to spend their days struggling to feed themselves, struggling to feed and raise the next generation, just keeping those kids alive one step ahead of death every day of their lives until they can take on the hardship of raising kids, pushing it one step ahead of death into the next generation.

34:35 And through every day of all of that, their hearts are going to be bent toward destroying and clawing at the good authority and good relationships that God intended. And this is going to go on. Day after day, year after year, generation after generation. And the only release from that pattern is going to be as each one of them lays their heads down in the dust to die. What a horrible picture. And you can see the results of it all in 22 to 24. God sees that Adam and Eve have acquired this new knowledge that makes them like him.

35:09 They have this knowledge that was forbidden to them because it was supposed to be his only. And it was the knowledge of guilt and shame and evil. They've got it now. and he drives them out of the garden so that they won't eat of the tree of life and live forever so that question that we've been thinking about why is life so hard why do human beings seem so universally bent on conflict on dominating each other and oppressing each other and crushing each other why does everything in human life so inevitably tend toward loss and death.

35:51 I'll tell you why. It's because we as a human race have declared independence from the God who is the source of all life and goodness. You ever think about that? What happens, friend, if that chandelier were to declare independence from the electrical system of the building? Life would not get better for that chandelier. It would go dark. You can't declare independence from the God of life and goodness and expect that to go well for you. You will inevitably die. And that's what Adam and Eve learned.

36:25 As they looked back over their shoulders at the flaming sword of the cherubim guarding the way back into the garden that they've just been kicked out of, that's what they learned. They learned that what they most needed, what was most going to bring joy and peace and happiness and satisfaction into their lives was not to be like God. but to be with him. And that's what they lost. They lost their relationship with God. They lost the freedom.

36:57 They lost the invitation to be in his presence and enjoy friendship with him. And that was everything. So friend, what do you have? What do you have that you think gives meaning to your life? What do you have that you think brings joy and happiness to your life? Just think about it a little more deeply, and you'll see that having all that stuff is nothing compared to being in friendship with God. Even in the midst of this cataclysm, though, God shows kindness.

37:33 So point number two, the unexpected thrill of God's grace. The unexpected thrill of God's grace. Most of this section here is exactly this 14 through 24 that we've been studying. Most of it is exactly what you'd expect in the wake of man's sin. What you get is curse and death and defeat and exile. Everything that we've been talking about for the last few minutes. But as you read it, like we've noticed, you start to see some other things popping through. You start to realize that even as God is handing down sentence on Adam and Eve and banishing them, sending them out into exile from the garden, it turns out that God is also showing them grace.

38:09 He's paving the way for the future of the human race to happen. Let me show you a few of these places. Look first at verse 20 there. It kind of just comes out of nowhere. I mean, we tend to read over it as Christians because we know this story so well that nothing surprises us anymore. But this verse 20, it just comes out of nowhere. It's not at all expected. And the last thing in 19 is about Adam's death, his returning to the dust that he's made of. I mean, it just looks like, okay, the sentence of death is going to be delayed. Adam's going to get a few more decades to stumble through this earth, and then he and Eve are both going to lay their heads down in the dirt, and that's going to be it for humanity. That's what you're supposed to kind of be thinking. But now in verse 20, completely unexpectedly, Adam names his wife Eve. It's this word that sounds like the Hebrew word for life, and he's got this idea that she's going to be the mother of all the living. Where is he getting that idea? It's utterly strange. I mean, these are the only two people on the planet right now. They're under a sentence of

39:10 death that could fall at any second. She hasn't had any children. She's not pregnant. There's nothing like that on the horizon. Where is Adam getting this idea? I mean, he's got the command from Genesis 1, right? Be fruitful and multiply. But surely the thought on his mind has to be that that's abrogated now, right? I mean, that was supposed to be for a human race that's Under God's authority, subduing the earth. Surely that's not on the table anymore. Where's he getting this idea? That even in the fall, the human race is going to carry on.

39:44 You know where he's getting it from? He's getting it from what God said in chapter 3, verse 15. The woman will have offspring, and one of those offspring will crush the serpent. Adam heard that, and his heart thrilled, because he believed that promise from God, and now he's acting on it. I mean, just by the way, you know that's what gives me hope, that Adam was ultimately a believer? It's because he believes God's promise in Genesis 3.15, and he immediately acts on it. He stakes his hope and his life on that promise. I mean, think about it for just a little bit. And that's really what it means to be a Christian, isn't it? It's to believe God's promises and act on them. Well, what promises? There's so many. I mean, I could spend all day up here just telling you the promises that Jesus and his followers make for those who will come to faith in Christ. Whosoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life. Everyone who

40:46 calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. If you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth, that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. None of those who come to me, Jesus said, will ever be snatched out of my hands. That's the question. Just like Adam, do you believe the promises that God has said? Do you believe the promises that God has made? Maybe it's that for the first time in your life, right here, as I say them, you're going, I kind of do. I kind of do believe this. You know what's happened, if that's the case? You know what's probably happened? If you find yourself believing God's promises for the first time, it may very well be that for the first time God's brought your soul to life. And what you need to do is say, yep, I believe him and I'm a Christian now because I'm trusting in Christ to save me. It may be, friend, that God brings your heart to life today. Look at the next sentence. So Adam believes the promise. That's a good thing.

41:44 Look at the next sentence, verse 21. It's just an extraordinary moment in 21 because God acts here. Do you see what's happening? They've been naked. They've been ashamed of their nakedness. They try to pull some fig leaves together to cover everything up and not be ashamed anymore. Those aren't going to last very long because they're leaves. And so God covers Adam and Eve's shame. Why the mention of animal skins? Well, maybe it's just history. Maybe it's just that it happened. And probably there's more going on here. And probably what's going on is that even here God is teaching these little humans the sad reality of what sin has done to them.

42:25 I mean, they'd already tried to cover their own sin. They tried to pluck some leaves off this tree. Nobody hurt. Nobody really affected. The leaves will grow back next year. No problem. But God knows that that's not how sin works. Sin is not so easily and flippantly covered. It affects others. And now this animal has to die in order to cover their shame. Friend, that's how sin always is. It affects others. It harms others. It always leaves a trail of blood wherever it goes. And the only time that trail of blood ever stopped was when Jesus was lifted up on the cross on Calvary.

43:03 And as the last drops of blood flowed out of his body, sin was finally ended. Above all, look at 3.15. We've kind of skipped it so far, But that's because it's so important. In fact, Christians have looked at this for millennia and realized that basically this is the first preaching of the gospel. This is the first prophecy of the coming of the Messiah who was going to undo everything that the serpent had done. So you can see what it's doing. Look at it. I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring.

43:35 He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. It's not that difficult. I think it's very straightforward. Those words offspring there obviously don't necessarily refer to physical offspring. That's true for Eve, for the woman. It's not true for Satan. Satan doesn't have physical offspring. What it's talking about is spiritual offspring. Those who believe and those who rebel. Those who are the seed of the woman who believes God's promises and those who are the seed of Satan who rebels against God's promises. And it says, ultimately, one of those seed of the woman will crush the serpent's head.

44:14 See the point? Crushing the serpent's head is exactly what Adam should have done but failed to do. And it's being promised right here. In the midst of the cataclysm, it's being promised that somebody else is coming to do what Adam failed to do. Another head crusher is coming. And here's the thing. From that moment on, from Genesis 3.15, it's just like an explosion that comes out of 3.15. The whole story of the Bible becomes the story of the question, who is this coming king? Who's the coming head crusher?

44:47 Who's it going to be? Is it Noah maybe? Maybe it's Noah. Nope, it's not Noah. Maybe it's Abraham. Nope. Is it Moses? Nope. One of the kings? Nope, nope, nope, nope. Forty some odd times. In fact, if you read the Old Testament carefully, one of the things you'll notice is that there is even a whole line of head crushers, like literal head crushers, saviors that keep pushing this promise forward into time. So Jael, in the book of Judges, what does she do? She crushes the head of the oppressor of the people of God with a tent peg. There's the woman who, do you remember what she does to Abimelech, another oppressor of God's people? She drops a millstone from a tower and crushes his head. And then, and then, above all, at least before you get to the great head crusher Jesus, there's David who takes his little stone and flings it around in a slingshot and throws it. And where does it hit the giant? In the head. Goliath, this giant who the Bible says has

45:47 armor like snake scales. It's incredible. None of those though, none of those head crushers are the fulfillment of Genesis 3.15. That happens in the most ironic way imaginable. When Jesus comes not as a conqueror, not as one who strides in on a white horse and a crown on his head, but as one who submits himself to the curse and dies in the place of his people. Now, if you think about that, if you think about the fact that the serpent's head was crushed because Jesus came and allowed the curse to be executed on him, which Satan tried so hard to get executed on human beings, You got to realize that that was just a, that must have been just a twisted, shocking irony for Satan to realize.

46:33 That God had crushed him, not by warfare, not by pure power, but by just carrying out the curse that Satan worked so hard to get established and pronounced. See, here's the thing, here's the great irony of it. Satan's whole power over us, his entire strategy to destroy us and take down God, lay in the fact that God must and will punish sin. He had to rely on God's good character even to rebel against him.

47:05 Because the whole strategy was, look, if I can just get, if I can get these humans to sin, then this good, righteous God of the universe will have no choice but to destroy them. He'll have no choice in his righteousness but to destroy his own greatest work. See, what Satan didn't reckon on, though, what he didn't think about was that God did, in fact, have a choice. He could pour out all that wrath. He could execute that curse on himself instead of us. The eternal Son of God could stand in our place as one of us and take our punishment for us.

47:41 For that's true. That's true for you if you've put your faith in Christ. The Bible says you're going to be one of two things. You're going to be seed of the woman, offspring of believers, or you're going to be offspring of Satan. One of the two. And you know what makes the difference? It's how you respond to this king who has given himself for sinners. I want you to see one more thing, result of all this. What did God place at the entrance to the Garden of Eden to guard it?

48:17 The Bible calls them cherubim. It means flaming ones, right? Cherubim is the plural of cherub. Cherubs aren't cute little things that you put on your mantle at Christmas. With fat little cheeks, that's not what they are. They're flaming ones with flaming swords. And they guard the way to the tree of life. They guard the way to the presence of God to keep human beings out. You know where else they show up in the Bible? They show up several places, but you know one other place they show up in the Bible? There are pictures of cherubim embroidered into the curtain that separated man from the Holy of Holies in the temple.

48:53 So the very job that they're doing in Eden, they're doing that same job symbolically in that curtain. They're embroidered as guardians of the Holy of Holies. You cannot come in here. What happened to that curtain? When Jesus died, it was ripped in half from top to bottom. And the way to God was made wide open to us. One more place they show up. You know where else they show up? Very end of the Bible. They show up in Revelation. One more time.

49:24 And you know what they're doing? They're not guarding the way to keep people out of the presence of God. They are welcoming believers into his presence. What a glorious story for them, huh? And a glorious story for us too. Let's pray. Our Lord, we thank you that you are a God of all grace. That you are a God of all power and all goodness. And that you, even in the midst of our fallenness, in the midst of our rebellion against you, you have been kind to us.

49:59 Because you sent your son Jesus to live as we should have in perfect obedience to you. to die the death, to exhaust the curse that we deserve because of our sins, and then to rise again to reign and to rule in majesty so that all who come to him in faith and repentance will be forgiven of their sins and welcomed into your presence. Lord, we thank you for all of these things, and we pray that you will help us to remember them all and put them into practice. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.